The Fourth Kyiv International Fair Knyzhkovy Sad-2004 (Book Garden 2004) opened at the Ukrainian Home with due pomp at 11 a.m. on May 19. With trumpets sounding, it was announced that Taras Shevchenko wrote his Kazemat (Dungeon) on this very day [in 1847]. Forty minutes were devoted to a discussion of this topic. After listening to details of Shevchenko’s biography, a well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman stepped aside, murmuring to himself, “May 19 also marks the birth of the Young Pioneers Organization named after Vladimir Lenin.”
In short, from the moment the book fair opened, those who took the floor broached the usual subjects, except the obvious topic of books and book publishing in Ukraine.
The exposition featured a great variety of attractively designed educational publications with a smattering of exclusive editions.
Yet the book fair’s major shortcoming remains the same — the lack of showmanship. Every event of this type must have a good scenario. As it was, the book fair had only one charming feature, a girls’ choir performing Ukrainian folk songs near the stands of the Soviet-era Veselka Publishers. The choir proved so popular that it was later borrowed to liven up the presentation of a landscape artist’s exhibit.
In order to attract visitors to children’s books, one publishing company had a girl and boy dressed up as Malvina and Buratino [heroes of Aleksey Tolstoy’s version of Pinocchio], but such examples were rare.
Vadym Karpenko Publishers boasted sets of Ukrainian books and cassettes for children, the only ones of their kind on display — and this despite the existence of so many different ways of attracting young readers, a very attractive niche in the book market. Svitlana Zorina, a recent guest of The Day, remarked that Ukrainian children’s books are approaching 30% of all sales of printed matter for children, and these figures exceed sales of adult books. As the crowd of visitors thinned out, the motley display of publishers and editions became apparent, with Explanations of Reincarnation, in which a raga guru explains the knowledge of the millennia, touchingly rubbing shoulders with the History of the Cossacks and a huge map.
The Day’s stand proved to be a major attraction, with intellectual-looking visitors eagerly leafing through the Ukraina Incognita books, marveling at their typefaces (these editions won the Book of the Year in the Golden Shelf nomination), asking the attendants about prices, whereupon some would put them back with a sigh-proof of the gap between the intelligentsia’s purchasing capacity and market costs, which gap deepened following the passage in September of the VAT on book publishing. These visitors were happy to receive a newspaper issue as a souvenir, so the shelf holding these papers was empty half an hour later.
As for celebrities among the visitors, no one attracted any special attention, as usual, so two noted writers, Andriy Kurkov and Vasyl Shkliar, had to entertain each other. They discussed something for a long time, with visitors walking past indifferently, a phenomenon known as the Kyiv syndrome.
Pavlo Zahrebelny was the only exception. This literary great required no publicity, and people stood in lines to get his autograph. But this did not change the overall picture. A book fair should not be a dull event, but this one was unspectacular, as usual. And that’s a crying shame!
